The Animal Factory »

Edward Bunker is the author of the acclaimed crime novels No Beast So Fierce, Dog Eat Dog, and Little Boy Blue. His long-awaited memoir, Education of a Felon, was published by St. Martin's in March. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and child.

The Animal Factory goes deep into San Quentin, a world of violence and paranoia, where territory and status are ever-changing and possibly fatal commodities. Ron Decker is a newbie, a drug dealer whose shot at a short two-year stint in the can is threatened from inside and outside. He's got to keep a spotless record or it's ten to life. But at San Quentin, no man can steer clear of the Brotherhoods, the race wars, the relentlessness. It soon becomes clear that some inmates are more equal than others; Earl Copen is one of them, an old-timer who has learned not just to survive but to thrive behind bars. Not much can surprise him-but the bond he forms with Ron startles them both; it's a true education of a felon.

New York Times Book Review - Michel

Edward Bunker's gritty prison novel,''The Animal Factory,'' originally published in 1977, rings with an unsurprising authenticity. The author was in and out of the California penal system for 18 years and spent time in San Quentin, where he was first incarcerated as a baby-faced 17-year-old...Bunker, who is also the author of a memoir titled Education of a Felon, writes in plain, sometimes clumsy prose, yet his oddly honorable bad guys have a rich emotional complexity. His digressions on penal reform are impassioned, if redundant. What armchair gangsters will most enjoy are the details about prison culture -- from the price of a life in cigarettes to how inmates communicate through the toilet ''telephone'' system.